BfB

This is a story about being high up, and looking at things, and it starts on the beach near Blundell Park in Cleethorpes, and will return there, but this is the late 1990s, and I am standing alongside an especially annoyed girl on my last day as a resident of Grimsby, before I return to Bradford.

During my time living in North East Lincolnshire, City and Town had been locked in a battle at the foot of the Second Tier. It was a battle City would win and Town would be relegated to the upset of many. The people of Grimsby had a resentment of Bradford, largely out of an idea that while it was a largely unremarkable place some distance away, it was featured a lot on TV.

Geoffrey Richmond, City’s rambunctious owner, was forcing the club’s profile to rise. He was good box office for Yorkshire Television, which served this part of not-Yorkshire, and his obvious and to be realised ambition was obnoxiously beamed into their homes when they tuned in to watch the Footie.

Standing then, on the beach, I wistfully told my increasingly irritated companion that I was glad that, for a spell in my life, I had lived by the seaside, prompting her brutal reply. “That, Michael, is the Humber. The Seas start over there.”

She pointed to the East. I headed West.

Mountain

It is said that on a clear day from Queensbury, and with good vision, you can see Goole. This feels mythically true, and standing high in a new home I look out but can only see Thornton and Clayton. The problem is firstly one of direction, I’m not facing the right way, but probably of distance too. Goole is a very long way away.

Goole, the 20,000 strong port town North East of Doncaster, was created when the River Don was diverted towards the River Ouse to take advantage of the waterways for transporting coal, although as with most places where people live, people lived in the area before that. It has two high water towers nicknamed Salt and Pepper which I imagine are the two things which I imagine people in Queensbury are imagining they are seeing, or perhaps they are.

I told this to another girl, although one not especially annoyed, and she gazed to the distance to see if she could catch a glimpse. “Are you sure it is that way?” I asked.

She pointed East.

Stockport

Nick Powell arrived at Bradford City as Bradford City beat his former club Stockport County 2-1 in the second statement win in three days for the Bantams, following a 2-1 win over Luton Town on the Saturday.

There is something old-fashioned in the profile of Powell. A player scooped up from Crewe Alexandra and hoisted high at Manchester United as a teenager, he is football in the 1990s when Rob Jones, or Lee Sharpe, or Seth Johnson could blast through the lower leagues through pure talent and pull on some famous jersey. Powell made three appearances for Manchester United, scoring once, and then a kind of 2016 reality hit.

Players were not scouted at Crewe’s Gresty Road any more, at least not the ones who formed the teams at Old Trafford. Released in the shuffle between Louis van Gaal and José Mourinho Powell’s career resumed the trajectory of many impressive English footballers who are not picked for the Premier League at places like Wigan Athletic, and Stoke City. Powell’s time at Stockport County, which came to an end this week, was seen as a mark of ambition for the Cheshire side when he signed, as it is for Bradford City now.

Ambition

Ambition is a curious thing in League One. Stockport County show plenty of it and, in signing Powell, so do City, but the manifestation of that ambition remains ineffable. The scale of clubs in The Championship has ballooned since the days when the likes of Grimsby Town and Bradford City battled for places. The average turnover in the division is £28m, and the average wage bill £20m.

Stockport County announced in their 2024 reports that they had doubled their turnover in two years to £8.6m, and Ryan Sparks told the Awesomess of Great Awesome Podcast that City could do similar this season. Television Revenues account for most of that increase, and clubs like these believe that that income can drive scale. That when County go up, County can use The Championship money to become a Championship team.

Probably before Tuesday night, no one at Bradford City had thought that ambition should include The Championship, or at least if it did it should not be said outloud, but probably there are the stirrings of a plan.

An irony of modern football is that City’s success, for players like Brad Halliday and George Lapslie, has resulted in their cooling their heels. For Richie Smallwood winning promotion resulted in being sent West to the Wirral and Tranmere Rovers. Ambition is made of stern stuff.

Sight

Some years ago I sat with a friend at the top of Grimsby Town’s largest stand watching James Hanson equalise for Town against the Bantams. I did not cheer the goal, but I could join in a clap for Big Jim as he wheeled away with his arm aloft.

Following the arc of Hanson’s celebratory run my eye went over the far stand and to the Humber Estuary behind, out to sea, and one can see from that raised position the change in sedimentation as the bodies of water run into each other. The border is as clear as any line on a map, and once the water has passed that very visible line it is not River as it was, or Estuary as it is, but Sea.

Perhaps you could look West to Goole from here, and to where The Ouse feeds into The Humber, and then on West to Bradford. Ambition is defined by its outer edge, by what you can conceive as ambitious, and it is hard to notice when the River becomes the Estuary which becomes the Sea.

You can see that from the top of Blundell Park, and sometimes you can see Goole from Queensbury, and perhaps in the week of Luton Town and Stockport County, you can see it there too.